We spent 10 years without knowing what US fighter jets were seeing in the sky; until a Chinese copy appeared

We spent 10 years without knowing what US fighter jets were seeing in the sky; until a Chinese copy appeared


With Beijing’s new announcement, the lines between science fiction and military development are blurrier than ever.




At the end of 2017, the New York Times published one of those stories characterized by what it could mean. The existence of a secret Pentagon program dedicated to investigating threats posed by possible UFOs has been revealed. And, among all the information, one attracted the most attention: the encounter of an unidentified object with two fighter planes, with video included. To date it has never been possible to confirm the origin of what mysteriously appeared in the sky.

Until China made an announcement.

The echo of the “Gimbal”. As we said, that video of the object called “Gimbal,” captured by a US Navy F/A-18, triggered a global debate about inexplicable aerial phenomena and technologies that go beyond known military capabilities.

Today, almost a decade later, China, through Zhengzhou Aeronautical University, has unveiled a replica of what we saw in those images: an experimental vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) drone whose design, surprisingly, closely resembles that of that mysterious artifact. It is a fuselage with an elliptical wing in the shape of a closed ring, reinforced by vertical stabilizers and four rotors positioned at the junction points.

The Chinese revolution in VTOL

At first glance, it looks more like a flying spindle than a conventional airplane or quadcopter.

However, behind this unorthodox shape lies engineering that combines the best of multirotor systems and fixed wings: maneuverability and…

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Source: Terra

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